Natural Disasters: Causes, Consequences and Its Preventive Role in Sustainable Development

Abstract

Disaster is defined as a crisis situation causing wide spread damage which far exceeds our ability to recover. Disaster is a sudden, calamitous event bringing great damage, loss, destruction and devastation to life and property. The damage caused by disaster is immeasurable and varies with the geographical location, climate and the type of the earth surface. Natural disasters are relatively sudden and cause large scale, widespread death, loss of property and disturbance to social systems and life over which people have a little or no control. Thus, any event can be classed as disaster when the magnitude of destruction and damage caused by it is very high. Communities will always face natural hazards, but today’s disasters are often generated by, or at least exacerbated by, human activities. At the most dramatic level, human activities are changing the natural balance of the earth, interfering as never before with the atmosphere, the oceans, the polar ice caps, the forest cover and the natural pillars that make our world a liveable home. But we are also putting ourselves in harm’s way in less visible ways. This paper seeks to determine the natural disasters, causes and consequences and its prevention. Nature is bountiful full of resources used by the living organisms use for their survival and well-being. But nature has its own control systems. Resources used up are replenished excesses are checked, all naturally through the biogeochemical cycles, the food chains and webs and other natural phenomena. Thus equilibrium is maintained in nature. This is called ecological balance and has in recent times been disturbed by human activities.